Listen, I know I’m pinching things here by pushing both videos to a New Year’s Eve clusterfuck. And I realize that this isn’t a fair trade off… but trust me, I want these vids to actually be worthwhile. So it gets the extra time to cook. In the meantime… you get this piece of business, which surprised me more than anyone.
Right, so sometime last year, while I was doing my weekly Wednesday PPV musings, I did musings for WCW Mayhem 2000 and I had declared it the final WCW 2000 that I would ever watch. A little over a couple months later, I was kindly informed that in all the time I’ve been bitching over having to put up with every horrible WCW 2000 PPV and the utterly miserable time I’ve had watching these goddamned shows, I have never done a musings on the one show from that year that genuinely mattered in the long term of things.
At first, I dismissed the notion. Surely, that’s a mistake. Surely I must have d0ne a musings on that show and it’s possible that it never published. Sometimes, that sort of happens around here where I would have something ready to go and it wouldn’t launch on schedule… or god forbid, a post would launch before it was even ready to do so. So I did a quick check on things and sure enough… I had the one hole left in that WCW 2000 checklist.
And sure enough, it was the show.
Bash At The Beach 2000.
Cue the Cornette face because I ain’t doing a banner for this shitshow.
WCW Cruiserweight Champion Chavo Guerrero (who doesn’t come out with the belt) defeated Juventud Guerrera (who did come out with the belt because he apparently stole on some prior programming… okay) to retain the title. You had a pretty solid cruiserweight match between two mainstays in the division before all the run-ins came into play. I want to say that it gets better from here, but that would be a hopeful falsehood.
Vito defeated Norman Smiley and Ralphus… Ralphus was the rather obese fellow who used to be Chris Jericho’s head of security, but now he’s part of this match who ends up eating the pin for Vito win or reclaim the Hardcore title, which used to be held by another guy who’s out injured. This was a thing that happened for five minutes and then I promptly forgot about it. As far as guys hitting each other with random crap is concerned, I’ve seen much better WWF hardcore matches with Crash Holly at the helm. Hell, even some of the 24/7 title bits with R-Truth are more entertaining than this. This was boring.
Daffney defeated Miss Hancock (a.k.a. Stacy Keibler) in a Wedding Gown match that saw Stacy strip out of her clothes to give up the match… ah, if only John Cena was around to tell her to never give up… too soon? Anyway, this was a thing that happened. I supposed horny teenagers would find this appealing and sexy, but it’s the year 2025 and I can get my titillations elsewhere and they’d be much more tantalizing than these aimless teases.
Kronik defeated World Tag Champs Chuck Palumbo and Sean O’Haire to win the tag titles in a completely worthless match that went longer than necessary. The best thing you could say about this match was that the Daytona Beach crowd were into Kronik, but then again, they could be stoned as fuck, which makes perfect sense in that regard.
Someone explain this recurring bit where Ernest Miller and the Dragon people are constantly fighting in the back. Is there something I’m missing here and most importantly, should I care? I could probably guess on the second answer being “no.”
Kanyon defeated Booker T with a run-in from Jeff Jarrett in what was almost a good match, but was merely competent until the perfectly necessary run-in from Jeff Jarrett. Kanyon was doing a DDP knock-off gimmick around this time, where he would dress up as DDP and carry a book around called Positively Kanyon, which was just DDP’s book (Positively Page) but with Kanyon’s mug all over it. This is something that would eventually be paid off with DDP’s return and (checks notes) result in Kanyon getting the PPV win over DDP at a 2001 PPV before giving Page his win back on Nitro. And then Vince came along, but enough about that.
The match between U.S. Champion Scott Steiner and Mike Awesome ends when Steiner applies his Recliner submission on Mike Awesome, and Ernest Miller – who was the commissioner at the time – stripped Steiner of the title due to the Recliner having been banned from the match on some prior programming… which is stupid because the Recliner is just a fancy name for a camel clutch, which is a submission maneuver popularized by the Iron Sheik and has been used by several wrestlers over the course of history. If the Recliner were a devastating move with career-ending ramifications – such as the piledriver, which was banned for a time in WWE and other places as well – that’d be one thing… but if Mike Awesome were to apply a camel clutch on Steiner, would he forfeit the match? Why is the booking for this show so shit?
Anyway, the match itself is just fine; another fine example of two big fuckers beating the ever loving fuck out of each other until the stupid fucking fuck finish came along.
Vampiro defeated The Demon Dale Torborg in what WCW called a Graveyard match… but is really one of the earliest examples of cinematic wrestling where they has a fight in a graveyard set with nigh a sliver of lighting to help anyone watching make out just what the fuck is going on here. But apparently, Vamp dumped Demon in a box and “buried” him before leaving. At least, that’s what the announcers read off their scripts to the home audience or something. Who thought this was a good idea and why were they allowed to live?
Shane Douglas defeated Buff Bagwell with an assist from Torrie Wilson… who also slapped Shane to help people think she’s on Bagwell’s side before she lowblows Buff in the Stuff. If you were a complete and utter moron, you probably didn’t see this coming. But if you were a thoughtful and intelligent viewer, you saw this coming long before Torrie Wilson picked out a pair of shoes to run out for her part in the match. Seriously, nobody got swerved with this shit. Even the dumbest wrestling mark on the planet saw this coming. My dog saw this coming 30 years before she was even fucking born. You do this swerve thing enough times and people stop caring.
And then we get the thing…
So here’s the deal; Vince Russo comes out in a Chicago jersey, so you know “it’s a shoot, brother” or some bullshit like that. Then Jeff Jarrett comes out with the WCW title, because he’s the champion or something. And then Hollywood Hogan comes out because this is our World title match that came about because Hogan won a No. 1 contenders match against Billy Kidman at the last PPV. As soon as the bell rings, Jarrett immediately lays down, Hogan pleads with him to get up while Russo is shouting at Hogan to pin Jarrett and win the belt. After a minute or so, Hogan grabs the mic, talks about WCW being in the shape that it’s in because of “bullshit like this” before laying a foot on Jarrett to “win” the title and walk off in disgust… see, ‘cuz it’s a shoot, brother… or something.
So after a bit part where Vampiro shows up at the arena to be attacked by hooded people including STING, Vince Russo comes back and shoots his shoot promo, talking about coming back for guys who bust their ass for this company and then points at Hogan as someone who doesn’t give a shit about this company. And then Russo strips Hogan of the title, gives it back to Jarrett, and books a new World title match between Jarrett and Booker T… you know, the same Booker T who lost to Kanyon earlier that night, but that wasn’t a shoot, brother and, oh, by the way, Hulk Hogan, you big bald son of a bitch, kiss Russo’s ass.
So there have been so many takes on this one incident, which has been covered in great detail elsewhere, so I won’t repeat that nonsense here… but I do recall first watching this and be like “What?” Granted, whenever Russo would try one of his famous “everything is fake except this” bits, I generally roll my eyes and don’t give it much thought, because sometimes the stuff that’s supposed to be “real as real can be” comes across as even faker than the fake wrestling stuff or whatever the case may be. It comes across as hokey and comical. Vince Russo’s big speech, which ended up being the thing that flipped Hogan’s lid enough to make him sue happy and effectively keep him away from WCW until it died, might have seemed like cutting edge stuff back in the day… but I never got that impression. Even when I was watching this back in the day, Vince Russo came across as the biggest cartoon character on television. As much as Russo fancies himself as such a great performer that people actually thought he was the character he played on TV, the truth was that the guy was just a terrible actor, never possessing much of the gravitas to make this big shoot thing anything close to convincing.
There are people who are skilled enough performers and orators to pull off the worked shoot concept well enough to blur the lines. CM Punk’s pipebomb was a thing that got people going because he had enough conviction in his voice that he made people believe that he genuinely felt the things he said he did… and he probably might have felt that way. Vince Russo never comes close to being convincing. Nothing he does as an on-screen character is “absolute cinema” as the kids call it. Fuck, it’s barely amateur hour at the local community theater. Some people might have fallen for this shit back when it played out, but I never did. This did nothing for me except to stop wasting time on WCW and just watch more RAW, which wasn’t the “exciting” product Russo was putting out, but fuck me, I was enjoying that show a hell of a lot more… and that was DESPITE the McSon-In-Law influence looming over the horizon.
Anyway, after that amazing “real as real can be” moment, we return to our fake wrestling entertainment as we get Kevin Nash vs. Bill Goldberg in a battle for Scott Hall’s contract, which Goldberg ate on television a couple times, but somehow still exists. Well, after about five minutes of “action” and a Scott Steiner run-in, Goldberg hits a spear and jackhammer on Nash for the win, which effectively ends the career of Scott Hall in WCW… not that it really mattered because Hall hadn’t been seen in ages and really, should I even care at this point? Nope.
And in the “hastily booked” main event as a result of the “real as real can be” shoot segment, Booker T – fresh off his loss to Kanyon on the SAME FUCKING SHOW – defeated WCW World Champion Jeff Jarrett to win his first of FIVE-FIVE-FIVE-FIVE-FIVE WCW Championships (head waggle)… I guess not. Anyway, the match was fine. Too many foreign objects and ref bumps for my taste, especially for a match that was booked out of necessity due to the very “real as real can be” segment, but whatever, it was a better match than we deserved on this fucking show. And let me tell you folks something – as much as I didn’t care for the mess that occurred earlier in the show, seeing Booker win the title at the end was a nice note to end it on. Was it the right call? Opinion is split on that, but I was just happy to see someone not named Hulk Hogan win the Big Gold Belt at the end of it all. Was it enough to get me to watch Nitro? Probably not, but then again, that was a partial blessing given what would happen afterwards.
So yeah, that was Bash At The Beach 2000, everyone. A complete and utter waste of everyone’s time that somehow convinced people that there was some monumental piece of business going on that changed the business forever, when in reality, it was another chapter in the downward spiral of stupidity for WCW before it eventually fell off the rails and crashed onto the pavement below where the pieces would eventually be picked up by WWF in 2001. The only reason to watch this show is for the one Russo promo that’s supposed to be a “real as real can be” shoot… but comes off as the fakest thing on the show. For anyone who thought that Russo could book worked shoots better than anyone, I would like to know what shows you watch so that I could see those for myself because I’ve seen nothing to confirm that.
Oh well… we’re done with WCW 2000 anyway. I ain’t watching Nitro. I sure as shit ain’t watching Thunder. I have no issues putting this year behind us and never touching it again. And by “this year”, I mean 2000. Not 2025, which I’ll be happy to put behind us tomorrow once these two goddamned videos are out of the way.
dtm666 